Emergency services benefit from zero emission vehicle funding boost

The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) has announced that £77m will be made available to support ambitions to build an end-to-end supply chain for zero emission vehicles that includes ambulance and fire and rescue services vehicles.

One of seven projects to receive funding from the APC Collaborative Research and Development Programme, the £7.9m HYER POWER project sees money from both government and industry developing a hydrogen fuel cell range extender for electric vehicles used for special purposes, such as ambulances and fire engines. This innovation will allow these vehicles to run without the need for lengthy recharging times out of service. 

The consortium is led by ULEMCO Ltd and includes partners Altair Engineering, Emergency One, Technical Services Ltd and Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service.

With £3.9m of the project cost coming from government and the rest matched by industry, the Government said that 682 jobs would be either created or safeguarded and it would lead to 1.1m tonnes of CO² savings.

This is the 22nd funding round from the APC. It collaborates with UK government, the automotive industry and academia to accelerate the industrialisation of technologies, supporting the transition to deliver net-zero emission vehicles.

Since its foundation in 2013, APC has funded 199 low-carbon projects involving 450 partners, working with companies of all sizes, and will have helped to create or safeguard over 55,000 jobs in the UK. The technologies developed in these projects are projected to save over 350 million tonnes of CO² , the equivalent of removing the lifetime emissions from 14.1 million cars.